Colombia Tax Bill May Improve Wealth Distribution, Santos Says

Colombia will send a tax bill to Congress in the next few days that will seek to improve wealth distribution, President Juan Manuel Santos said.

“We have sufficient funds, we don’t need more funds,” Santos said yesterday, according to a statement on the presidential website. “Our tax system doesn’t help to improve wealth distribution and what we want is for our system to be fair.”

The government will propose keeping in place a wealth tax, and is reviewing taxes on foodstuffs and some capital gains taxes, Congressman Angel Cabrera, a member of a congressional finance committee, said April 19 after a meeting with Finance Minister Juan Carlos Echeverry. Colombia’s central government budget deficit this year may be 2.4 percent of gross domestic product, below the 2.6 percent target, Echeverry told reporters yesterday.